COBRA: From Industrial to Medical Surgery with Slender Continuum Robots

The maintenance of critical industrial components is often hindered by limited access, tortuous passages, and complex geometries. In highly constrained environments, inspection tasks are currently performed with borescopes, but even skilled operators struggle with hard-to-reach targets and the limited mobility prevents in-situ repair when defects are identified. Thanks to an active shape control, snake-like and continuum robots can outperform borescopes for short range inspection as well as enable intervention. However, their actuation technology limits their scalability in length, as longer bodies pose control challenges due to their intrinsically low stiffness and space constraints. To overcome the limitations of both borescopes and continuum robots, we here propose a modular design at their intersection, with both active tendon-driven and passively flexible segments. The main elements of the novel design, including actuation and control interface, are described, and the system is demonstrated in scenarios for aerospace assets, nuclear installations, and robot-assisted surgery.